A Funny PSA from Unbridled Books

You may have noticed how fond I am of Unbridled Books (I've read at least four of their books in the past few months). They turn out high-quality, unique books time and again. Turns out they've also got a great sense of humor!

Unbridled Books P.S.A. from Unbridled Books on Vimeo.

The Book List Meme - February 3

The Book List Meme is brought to us by Rebecca of Lost in Books. This week's topic is 3 Books I Read When I Need A Good Cry. I'm not really one to cry when I read, but these three certainly did me in.

How could you not cry when the Nazi's make a mother choose between her two children? And then the suicides? C'mon! William Styron's "Sophie's Choice" is bound to make you shed at least a tear or two.







Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women" is one of my favorite books. I read it to my daughter not too long ago and found I still got a lump in my throat when Beth died.








Since I just told you about Norma Klein's "Sunshine" a couple of weeks ago, I know you understand why I cried when I read about a young mother dying.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

Hotel On The Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
320 pages
Published October 2009 by Random House Publishing Group
Source: Lisa and TLC Book Tours and the Random House

It's 1986 and Henry Lee happens to be walking past the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle's Japantown but long since boarded up, when he notices that a crowd has gathered at the steps leading into the hotel. The new owner, getting ready to refurbish the building, has discovered a basement full of the belongings of Seattle's Japanese families that were sent to internment camps. As the owner shows the crowd a Japanese parasol, Henry's mind begins wandering back in time to the 1940's and his youth.

Henry, the son of Chinese immigrants, is being forced to attend an American school, rather than then Chinese school where he felt much more at home. But, because of World War II and China's war with Japan, Henry's father feels that Henry needs to become more American. He forces Henry to speak only in English, despite the fact that neither of Henry's parents understand much English and speak even less. And despite that fact that Henry's father is a fierce Chinese patriot. Henry is miserable at the school as the only student of Asian descent; he is regularly harassed by the school bullies, must work in the lunchroom for a woman who makes him very uncomfortable, and his father makes him wear a button that says "I am Chinese." Henry's only real friend is a young black man, Sheldon, who plays saxophone on a street corner.

Then Keiko Okabe begins working in the lunchroom. Keiko is of Japanese descent and, therefore, off limits as far as Henry's father is concerned. Their growing friendship must be kept hidden. One night they sneak off to a jazz club, where Sheldon is playing. They are having an amazing night until the reality of the times they are living in strike home. The club is raided and the Japanese patrons are arrested. Soon all of the Japanese are rounded up and sent to internment camps. Henry promises Keiko he will wait for her.

Forty years later, Henry is a widower and is more than a little upset to realize that his relationship with his only son, Marty, is no better than the one he had with his own father. When Marty introduces Henry to the girl he is engaged to marry, Henry realizes he has the opportunity to make things better. He enlists the two to help him find an record in the basement of the Panama Hotel, a record that has music on it that Henry and Keiko heard that night they were in the jazz club. Henry has never forgotten his first love.

Generally, I try to give you both the strengths and weaknesses of a book. But I'm hard pressed to find much to give you in the way of weaknesses. I do have mixed feelings about the ending--a part of me was very satisfied with it and a part of me felt it should have been handled differently. Ford does make use of some cliches and fiction standards (such as the school yard bullies). The love story was charming but I did, sometimes, have a problem believing that a love that begins between two eleven-year-olds would stand the test of time. But I was so taken by Henry and Keiko that I was more than willing to buy into their relationship. Publishers Weekly calls the narrative flat and the book strained and disappointing. Ford's writing does not have the lyricism and poetry of some writers but I did not find the book disappointing. I was concerned that I might. I was prepared to; I was expecting so much from this book.

The reality of what happened to the Japanese in this country during the second World War provides more than enough emotional punch. As in this scene where the Henry finds the Japanese burning anything that might make them appear to be Japanese spies to the American authorities:

""Why are they doing this?" Henry asked, not fully understanding what he was seeing with his own eyes.

"They arrested more people last night. Japanese, all over the city. All over Puget Sound. All over the state, maybe," the photographer told him. "People are getting rid of anything that might connect them to the war with Japan. Letters from Nippon. Clothing. It all must go. Too dangerous to keep. Even old photos. People are burning photos of their parents, of their families.""

I was aware of the internment of the Japanese during World War II but I have never really read anything that specified how it was done nor how the Japanese were treated. I found this part of the book fascinating; it was well worth reading the book for this alone.

Thanks to Lisa and TLC Book Tours for including me in the tour of this wonderful book! I think this would make a terrific choice for a book club read. I myself have sticky notes all over the book of things that a group could discuss.

The Day The Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan

The Day The Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan
320 pages
Published August 2009 by Voice
Source: borrowed from a friend

It's 1915 and 17-year-old Bess Heath is living a pampered life: her father is the director of the Niagra Power Company, her sister, Isabel, is engaged to marry the most eligible young man around, and Bess is finishing up her next to last year at a boarding school for the wealthy.

Until her father makes a catastrophic investment mistake that costs him his fortune. To make things even worse, he has convinced a number of other men to join him in the investment. When they lose their money as well, the family is left not only penniless, but friendless as well. Bess' father leaves everyday to begin another day of drinking, Isabel's fiance has broken things of leaving Isabel a mere shadow of the person she was, and Bess' mother must now take on dress making to try to keep things together.

The only bright spot in Bess' life is Tom Cole, a young man she met on the trolley car platform the day she left school. Tom lives in a room in a seedy hotel, lives off the river and has an ability to "read" the river. Despite everything that is going on in Bess' family, Tom is still seen as being well below her and any time she spends with him is must be done secretly. Publishers Weekly calls the romance between the two "uneventful." I found it to very realistic.

When an old family friend suddenly becomes interested in Bess and asks her to marry him, her parents are thrilled; they see the chance to redeem the family but Bess is less than thrilled when she makes the decision to put her family ahead of her own desires.

And here is where I had to make a decision. At this point, there is about half of the book left. But to tell you more, I would have to reveal a major spoiler. And I just can't make myself do it. You'll just have to trust me when I tell you that the story is only just beginning for Bess at this point. In the eight years of this book, Bess will become a working girl, a wife and a mother.

There is so much going on in this book. Buchanan has woven a love story into a novel that deals with the issues of family obligation, class structure, betrayal, forgiveness, war, politics, and nature versus progress. So many times when an author tries to include so much in a story it can feel forced and contrived but I never felt that way about this book. Buchanan has clearly done her research about the history of Niagra Falls and does a splendid job of blending that history into the story.

Because I had heard good things about this book, and because it sounded so interesting, I recommended it to my book club. So when I started it, I was a bit nervous. What if I didn't like it and had foisted it off on everyone else? My book club is scheduled to meet to discuss this in two weeks so I don't know yet what the rest of the group will think of the book. I'm so hoping that they will enjoy it as much as I did.

Sunday Salon - January 31

How To Start A Library:
Take a determined woman with an idea, a little red wagon and a giving community.

That woman with an idea was my great-grandmother, I can only imagine that the little red wagon may have belonged to my grandmother, and the community was the small Nebraska town where the family lived. The library started more than 100 years ago as a circulating library, officially becoming a library in the 1920's. My great-grandmother was a lifetime member of the library's board.

Knowing how important the library had been to my great-grandmother, when he died, my great-uncle left money to the town to begin a fund for a new building for the library. Despite being a town of only around 1000 people, the town worked hard to raise the remaining funds necessary for the new building and ground was broken in 2003. By the descendants of my great-grandmother!



Now, if you visit the library, you will be reminded of one family's commitment to reading when you plop down in a comfy chair in the center of the library named for my family. In this time of cutbacks that are so greatly effecting municipal libraries, if you have the means to do so, won't you please consider making a donation to your local library?




And the winner of a copy of Zoe Heller's The Believers is Victoria! Congratulations!

Friday Favorite - Cathedral

Cathedral, by Nelson DeMille, is a book I found in a box of books at my in-law's house in 1983. I remember when I found it because I know I read it before my husband and I went to New York City as part of a delayed honeymoon trip. To be honest, I can't remember details of the book, except to recall that I found it incredible gripping and amazingly detailed.

From Mr. DeMille's website, here's a description of the book:

"St. Patrick's Day, New York City. Everyone is celebrating, but everyone is in for the shock of his life. Born into the heat and hatred of the Northern Ireland conflict, IRA man Brian Flynn has masterminded a brilliant terrorist act - the seizure of Saint Patrick's Cathedral. Among his hostages: the woman Brian Flynn once loved, a former terrorist turned peace activist. Among his enemies: an Irish-American police lieutenant fighting against a traitor inside his own ranks and a shadowy British intelligence officer pursuing his own cynical, bloody plan. The cops face a booby-trapped, perfectly laid out killing zone inside the church. The hostages face death. Flynn faces his own demons, in an electrifying duel of nerves, honor, and betrayal…"

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while know that this is not the kind of book that I usually read. But then you also have probably noticed that I'm willing to read a variety of books. This one takes place almost entirely in St. Patrick's Cathedral and I had rarely read a book that painted such a vivid picture of a place. So when my husband and I went to New York City in the summer of 1983, I had to go see the cathedral. I'm not sure my husband quite understood the attraction, after all, we're not Catholic. But as someone who has more than a passing interest in architecture, he was willing to play along. When we first got into the cathedral, I was immediately reminded that this was not just another tourist attraction. There were, of course, people praying in there. So we quietly went to a middle pew where we could get a good look at everything without being too disruptive. I was almost giddy to realize that the picture that DeMille had painted in my head was so accurate that I could vividly see the characters moving around the place just as the book had described.

I've never re-read the book, nor have I ever read any other DeMille, but I still have the book. Because much as I have always loved to read, as many books as I had already read by that point in my life, that was the first book that had ever really made me realize that a vivid setting can be just as important to a book as the characters set in it.

Thanks to Alyce of At Home With Books for hosting My Favorite Reads.

An Interview with Kristen Tsetsi, Author of "Homefront"

Have I mentioned before how much I love blogging? I do; I love blogging. About a week ago, I was, once again, reminded of one of the reasons I love blogging. Authors want to talk to me! I had added to my blog that I was currently reading "Homefront" by Kristen Tsetsi. A couple of days later, I got an email from Kristen saying that she had happened upon my blog and was thrilled to see that I was reading her book. As an author of a self-published book, Tsetsi is in charge of her own marketing, so she was more than willing to do an interview. Yea!

1. Home Front is semi-autobiographical. What made you decide to tell your own story?

Well, what makes it semi-autobiographical is that I couldn't have written it if I hadn't experienced a wait through a deployment. The events (minus the war timeline) and the characters are all fictional.

Tim O'Brien writes in The Things They Carried, "Story truth is sometimes truer than happening truth." My personal story was not exceptional enough to be a novel; I didn't want to write about me. I wanted to write about the larger story, so I relied on fiction to convey the emotional truth of that larger story.

What made me want to write it, though, was that there were a number of books - fiction and nonfiction both - delving into the soldier experience, but there was little (if anything) that made readers feel with equal intimacy and rawness the complex emotions plaguing those who don't know from one day to the next whether the person they love most will be killed that day.

2. Like Mia, you were a cab driver for a time. The down sides to that seem pretty obvious. Where there any things about the job you liked?

I absolutely love driving. I used to try to snag my sister's Big Wheel before my legs were long enough to reach the pedals. When I was a little older, I would take advantage of any opportunity to steer my dad's car. I even wanted to grow up to be a truck driver or a school bus driver. So, the driving part of cab driving was a lot of fun. And the experience itself is one I'm glad I had. Cab driving was something I'd always wondered about, and now I don't wonder, anymore.

3. Was there a real Donny?

There are real Donnys everywhere. Anyone who has ever met a troubled Vietnam veteran knows Donny Donaldson. I did know a man over a decade ago who said he was a Vietnam vet, and who inspired the Donny Donaldson character, but the two are different people.

4. Since Home Front does deal with real events in your life, were you concerned about any of the people portrayed in it being upset with you? What has been their reaction?

Because the characters in Homefront are fictional (or composites, at best), there was no one around who might be upset (thank goodness). Wait - my best friend did identify a fragment of her personality in Denise, but she liked the part she recognized. (The strength, the blunt honesty.)

5. Your writing style is very unique in this book. When you started writing was it a conscious decision to mix in the very short bits with the longer, more traditional sections?

Yes. I wanted every passage, every chapter, to read in such a way that Mia's mood would be immediately obvious. I also didn't want to write a traditional novel - I wanted to play with writing and form and language and everything that is fun about writing. Poets are usually the ones to take full advantage of that freedom, and I saw no reason not to be just as free in a novel. I wanted to be able to end a paragraph mid-sentence, or use one word per line, or write half a page of narrative without a period - anything that would best convey the thought processes and intimate moods of the narrator. So, I did.

6. Between reporting and writing short stories, you've had to develop the ability to tell a story in short form. What made you decide it was time for a novel? What was the biggest difference between writing short stories and writing a novel?

At some point, my short stories started feeling like they could be longer. Or, maybe it's that I was suddenly able to envision them continuing beyond the final page. After Ian (my boyfriend at the time, and my husband, now) returned from Iraq, and after enough time passed that the memory of his absence began to poke at me as a story needing to be written, I knew the year he was away was such a complex and powerful experience that it would take something the length of a novel to communicate it.

Novels are more difficult for me. I developed a big love for short stories very early on because they're so densely packed, so intense, and so intentional, that there's a constant challenge to whittle the whole thing down to, essentially, a climax. I never thought I would be able to write a novel because there's just so much FILLER. Words and words and words and words...the "what next" and "what now?" are my primary source of novel-writing frustration.

But when I remember each chapter is essentially a short story, it gets a little easier.

7. What made you decide to self-publish?

Impatience and reality. After querying for a while, I realized that it could take years to find an agent. After that, it could take years to get the book published (or to even be picked up by a publisher, if I were so lucky). I didn't want to wait. It's an important story relevant to the times, and there are hundreds of thousands of people going through an intensely traumatic and confusing and horrific experience right now. They have been since 2001. Actually, they have been since wars began. Even so, their story is rarely told, which puts them in the position of feeling inconsequential on top of what they're already going through. (You have no idea how many military spouses/significant others feel guilty about wanting to talk about their weaker moments - they're not at war, so what do they have to complain about, right?)

I wanted the book to be available to them so they would have a companion, and I wanted it to be there for those who talk about war like it's a story on TV. I want them to know the people whose lives are affected, and in what way they're affected. And I'm not talking about being left alone having to take care of a house - I'm talking about the way a regular day is affected when up to fifteen emotions clash in any number of combinations on a daily basis. I'm talking about what it means for there to be no such thing as a "regular" day.

When approached through a blog survey I created, spouses and significant others were quick to respond to my questions about what they go through when their loved one is deployed: sleep loss, anxiety, depression, and sometimes a wall between family and friends who can't understand what they're going through. Of course, all of the responses were anonymous. (I'm always sure to include significant others with spouses because love doesn't begin at marriage, and often if you're not married during a deployment there are certain privileges they're not entitled to.) The one question I didn't ask that I wish I would have is, "What thoughts and emotions do you have that make you feel guilty?" Because I know I had many of them (which I included in one way or another in Homefront) that would be difficult to talk about.


8. Can you tell us what inspired Backward Books and how you got it up and running? How do you draw authors to Backward Books?
Henry Baum (author of North of Sunset and The American Book of the Dead) and a man who chose to leave to pursue other ambitions were actually two of the first people behind Backword Books. They invited me in, and then came the rest. Henry and the other man had the idea to bring together a group of authors who would be a mutli-armed marketing force. Because independent publishers (or self-publishers - whatever your preference) don't have the benefit of a publisher name behind them and, as a result, their books aren't likely to show up on bookstore shelves across the country, the more people there are to create a buzz about the writing, the more likely readers are to hear about it.

As for drawing authors to Backword Books...those literary authors we've asked to join have said yes readily, for the most part. We look for someone who not only has a good book (we look at any published reviews, and then one of us reads the book), but who is also an active promoter of his or her own work. We want people who will write a blog now and then, who will help brainstorm marketing ideas,who will take part in group ideas (such as interviews, virtual book tours, appearing on radio shows) and who will share relevant links and news with their friends and acquaintances. Those who don't want to actively market end up losing interest in being a member.

9. Can you share what you're working on now?

I'm working on my second novel, The Year of Dan Palace (working title). Dan Palace experiences a sudden awareness that he may not have long to live. From that moment on, he behaves as if he has nothing to lose, and his relentless quest for his own happiness wreaks havoc on the lives of those who care about him.

10. Do you have a guilty pleasure?

TV. I love TV. What do I like to watch on TV?...Oh, so many things. But, to choose some favorites (a few of which should cause shame, but what can I say? I'm a sucker for drama) - Dexter, Medium, 30 Rock, Burn Notice, Mad Men (favorite-favorite), Californication, House, Project Runway, and the New York and Orange County Real Housewives. (But, honestly, if the TV is on, I can find something to watch. I rarely watched it when I was a kid, so I guess I'm making up for it. My time would be better spent reading, of course. Or writing! Probably writing.)

Kristen is a former reporter for the Journal Inquirer newspaper, former Women’s eNews correspondent, former APSU (adjunct) English professor, former Clarksville, TN cab driver, editor of American Fiction, and the author of Homefront , the short story collection Carol’s Aquarium, and the short, little book How to (Not) Have Children

To learn more about Kristen, her writings, Backword books, and Kristen's work providing support for our troops, please visit these links:

Kristen's home page: http://www.kristentsetsi.com/.

Kristen's blog: http://kristentsetsi.wordpress.com/.

Backword Books: http://www.backwordbooks.com/.


Thanks so much, Kristen!